


come home with me

by cave_canem



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: F/M, POV Katelyn, POV Outsider, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-12 00:16:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20555054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cave_canem/pseuds/cave_canem
Summary: Car troubles leave Aaron and Katelyn stranded near Columbia on their return to PSU. Andrew (as Aaron says), will have to deal with it: they’re spending the night at the Columbia house.And there aren’t even that many dirty socks out.





	come home with me

“Fuck,” Aaron says furiously, hitting the wheel with his palm. “Fuck!”

His hand comes up again. Katelyn winces discreetly—it’s  _ her  _ car—but Aaron never completes the movement. His fist opens, and he gently lays his hand back on the wheel. 

She blinks. He sighs deeply before folding in half, resting his forehead on the wheel. 

“Fuck,” he says again, with feeling. 

“Fuck,” she agrees. Then, because swearing does not make an interesting conversation: “I'll call a tow truck.” 

Aaron unclips his seatbelt, looking vaguely ahead at the the hood of the car where lies the mysterious—and faulty—engine. “Do we know what's happened?” he asks. “Do you have—a jack, or whatever?” 

“That's for flat tires,” replies Katelyn. 

Thankfully they're on the interstate: plenty of signal.  _ Car repair near me _ , she types in the search bar, waiting for the page to load. On their left, cars are still speeding down the road at top speed. They both jump when a motorbike speeds past them with the distorted blare of a horn. Katelyn becomes acutely aware of how narrow the emergency lane is. The cars barrel incredibly fast toward them, despite the fact that they’ve been cursing slow-pokes drivers all afternoon. 

“Asshole,” Aaron seethes next to her.

“I’ll get the emergency triangle,” she says, popping the door open. 

Katelyn graciously decides that the sound Aaron makes is closer to a hum than a grunt. He’s already punched the hazard lights on, but she needs the breather. 

The emergency triangle is in the trunk; Katelyn steps on the dirty asphalt of the emergency lane, squinting in the light of her phone to pick her way through broken glass and other unidentifiable pieces of trash. 

Another car blows past them, ruffling her hair and her clothes. She shivers once and opens the trunk. Katelyn is an organized person, whatever her mom—with her very selective memory of Katelyn’s teenage room looked like—says. She finds the emergency bag she packs in the trunk of her car. Most of its content is useless to their plight, unless they have a flat tire on top of their engine problems. 

There’s been a light blinking on her dashboard for the last week. Neither Aaron or her are good with cars, so they decided to ignore it for their trip up to her parents’, and when they were there Katelyn forgot to ask them. They only remembered the light three hundred miles into the trip back to PSU and in the end elected to drop the car at the shop near campus. They were thirty minutes out of Columbia—almost two hours away from campus—when the car started to show serious signs of derelict, so Aaron pulled on the emergency lane. Once stopped, the car refused to turn on again. Hence their current predicament. 

Night is falling and the day has been unreasonably cold. Katelyn unfolds the emergency triangle, places it a few paces behind their car and drops back into her seat, huddling in her coat. 

“Alright,” she says, unlocking her phone and scrolling down the Google results. “Tow trucks, tow trucks…”

“It’s going to cost a fortune,” says Aaron grimly, who lets his brother drive him around in a Maserati but was raised on cheap cans of beans and rice. 

“I’ll ask my mom to cover it,” Katelyn says. “They know I can’t work with my scholarship, so they’re cool with giving me money.”

Aaron glances at her. He says nothing—just as well. It  _ is _ her car. He chews on his lip, glancing at the clock on the dashboard.

“They’re not going to drive us to fucking Palmetto,” he sighs.

“Maybe we can get a room somewhere close,” Katelyn says. 

She understands the sigh; it’s late, they’ve driven all day, and Katelyn wishes for nothing else than to be back in her dorm with her stuff and her pillows. Being with her family for the break was great, but her nephew is almost two and Katelyn’s sister has yet to teach him the concept of quietness. She knows it was even more overwhelming for Aaron, too. 

Aaron drums his fingers on the wheel. “Fuck it,” he says. “He’ll have to deal with it.”

He has the dark tone that he reserves for his brother. Katelyn stills with her thumb over the call button on her phone. “What?” she asks.

“We have a house in Columbia,” Aaron replies, lifting off the seat to slide his phone out of his pants pocket. “We can sleep there tonight. My bed is a double.”

“Andrew?”

“Can fucking let me crash at my own house,” Aaron spits. 

He’s posturing, Katelyn can see it. He can rant and get angry, but despite almost two years of therapy, he’s still on shaky grounds when it comes to Andrew’s unpredictability. Katelyn stays quiet, so Aaron looks up at her. He must find something in her face; he grows softer, but still serious.

“Are you okay with that?” he asks, and in spite of the situation Katelyn finds a smile pull up at her lips.

Trading his abusive mother for Andrew’s overbearing control means that for a long time, Aaron had a hard time taking the initiative. Katelyn has never commented on it without being invited, but she’s introduced him to the apparently novel concept of  _ asking _ . 

She locks her phone again, turning in her seat to face him. 

“What would that entail?” she asks. 

“My room is on the same floor as his,” Aaron says. “They both sleep in his room—” His pronouns are murky when Katelyn knows she’ll be the only feminine presence in the house if they do end up going, but she understands well who Aaron means. “Nicky and Kevin are in Nicky’s room downstairs. Unless Nicky has decided to have phone sex with Erik, in which case Kevin’s kicked to the couch and we all try to ignore it.”

“Mmhm,” Katelyn says. “So they’re all here?”

With Neil to act as a buffer, things might be better, although Neil doesn’t have a perfect record either. Katelyn can still remember his stony silence and blank expression in the library, when he’d let Andrew push her up against the stacks and threaten her like she was nothing more than a bug under his shoe. No, Neil is unreliable. Nicky and Kevin, she knows, don’t hold any real influence on Andrew, but at least they can physically step between Katelyn and Andrew. 

“My door locks from the inside,” Aaron mentions last. “We’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning.” 

She doesn’t think a lock on the door will solve any problems arisen from the situation. The other four men in the house are completely uninterested, at least. Three of them prefer men, and Katelyn isn’t sure what Kevin Day’s sexuality is, but she suspects it involves a court and an active interest in exy. 

“I’m good with it if he is,” she agrees at last. 

She calls the tow truck before she can lose her nerve. Aaron’s eyes are on her the whole time, and when she hangs up he kisses her before she can even tell him the man on the phone said, “at least an hour.” 

* * *

Aaron steps outside to call. He huddles on the hood of the car, turning his back to the road. He has one arm crossed against his chest, hunching in a little. Katelyn wishes she could tap his shoulders like her mom did her whole life and tell him to stand up straight. 

He looks at her through the windshield almost the whole time, except when whatever Andrew tells him over the phone angers him so much that he turns away, mouth twisting violently. Katelyn watches him get up, pacing irritably down the length of the hood and stopping abruptly to trace mindless patterns on the metal of the car. 

In the end he hangs up, looking down at his phone with a pensive face. Katelyn’s cut off the heating in the car to keep the battery on and she shivers once. 

Aaron slides back in the driver’s seat, dropping his phone in the cup holder. 

“So?”

“He said yes.” His face sets. “Neil’s coming to fetch us.”

Oh, joy. Still: “That’s nice of him.”

Aaron glances at her, like he agrees but he refuses to say so. Katelyn resists the urge to roll her eyes. Men and their egos. 

“I’m glad he listened to you,” she says instead. “That’s progress, right?”

Aaron humphs but doesn’t disagree. She can see that the victory satisfied him as well. Since they know someone’s coming to get them, they don’t hesitate to use up the rest of Katelyn’s phone battery by playing Words With Friends with her cousin in Oregon. 

“You can spell ‘gazebo’ here,” Aaron says just before a black Maserati pulls up right in front of them on the shoulder. 

Katelyn quickly drags the letters in place on her screen before leaving the game. As expected, Neil Josten steps out of the car, slick and aloof like a rugged-looking model in a car commercial. Not that Katelyn would ever tell Aaron that. 

Neil looks at them quizzically, but he waits by the Maserati for Katelyn and Aaron to drag themselves into the cold. 

“What happened?”

“Not sure,” Aaron replies. “Something with the engine.”

Katelyn says, “Hey. Thank you.”

Neil blinks, like he forgot about politeness. She figures it’s not too far from the truth. The Foxes, and Aaron’s family particularly, aren’t big on formalities. 

He nods at her. “When’s the tow truck coming?”

“They said an hour, and that was”—she checks the time—“at least forty minutes ago.”

“Luggage?”

“In the trunk.”

Aaron grabs his bag from the top of the pile while Katelyn manoeuvers her large suitcase—she brought back a lot of laundry—out of trunk. She stacks the shopping bag full of Christmas presents on top of it, passes Neil the potted plant she got from her grandparents and hands Aaron the cute woven basket her mom filled with food. 

Neil looks at the plant like he wants to ask questions—has he ever had plants?— but in the end he takes it in stride. 

The trunk of the Maserati is bigger than Katelyn expected. Her suitcase fits easily, and what doesn’t is dumped on the backseat. She locks her car with the fob and they all pile into the warm Maserati. 

Aaron surrenders the passenger seat to her easily, opting instead to spread across the backseat, his head pillowed on his backpack. 

This time, they wait in silence. 

* * *

Neil follows the tow truck to the shop, where Katelyn is told everything that’s not right with her car by people confidently using words she doesn’t understand. She leans over her engine when the mechanic gestures her to, nods as if she understands the problem—she does, albeit very shallowly—and makes a promise to herself to call her parents first thing tonight to check that she isn’t being swindled. Maybe she should read up on mechanics. She doesn’t like being in the dark, but she’s also never been able to conjure up enough interest to do so in the past. 

Neil and Aaron wait for her in the waiting area—predictably filled with pictures of cars and engines—trying to avoid the looks of the other mechanics, who are glancing rather obviously at the flashy Maserati parked in front. 

“What’s the verdict?” Aaron asks when she emerges from the office, folding in half the paper they gave her.

“They say they can be done by tomorrow afternoon,” she says. “They’ll give me a call.”

“What was the problem?” Neil asks.

Katelyn shrugs. “I’m not sure. It’s written here, but—” She hands him the paper, which he takes with a visible hesitation. His eyes flit over the page.

“I don’t know what it means,” he admits as he hands it back to her. “Aaron?”

“Don’t look at me.”

They all look at each other, a trio of the less car-savvy people Katelyn’s ever met. She has to laugh, though she’s the only one. Aaron smiles and takes her hand, and Neil lets the corners of his mouth quirk up from their usual bland expression. 

“I was supposed to pick up dinner on the way,” Neil says. “What do you want?”

“Is Nicky still crying over leaving Germany?”

“He spent a long time in his room, so yes, I think.”

“Pizza, then,” Aaron decides.

One of the pizzas they order has pineapple on it, which Katelyn frowns at with distaste when she hears it. 

“Kevin,” Neil explains, “has recently decided pineapple was his favorite fruit, so he’s been wanting to try it on pizza.”

“At least it’s good pizza,” Aaron remarks. 

They took advantage of being on the other side of town to get dinner at a pizza parlor that doesn’t usually deliver to the cousins’ house. They sit around a four-seat table while their order is being prepared and Katelyn tries to ignore how awkward the whole thing is. If she were alone with Neil, she’d make small-talk, even though Neil’s eyes tend to blank out whenever she does, but she knows that dragging Aaron in such a conversation would be impossible. It would make the whole thing even more awkward, so Katelyn just plays with the salt and pepper shakers, nudging them with the tip of her finger. 

Neil’s phone vibrates loudly, surprising all of them. Katelyn watches as he opens the old flip phone and poke at a couple of buttons, thinking fondly of her own smartphone. 

He never tells them who it is, but he fires a short answer and drops the phone back on the table. Aaron watches him do it with inquisitive eyes, then he says loudly, “Ice cream.”

“I don’t know if they make it to go,” Katelyn says, taken aback.

“There’s a store across the street,” Neil answers. 

Aaron nods. He doesn’t move until they’re paying, but he splits from them when they get back to the car with the pizza boxes and makes his way to the small 7/11. He comes back two minutes later with an armful of cartons of ice cream. 

“Bribery?” Neil asks, almost sounding amused. 

All the same, he produces an insulated bag from the depths of the trunk, holding it open so Aaron can deposit the cartons inside.

“If it works,” is Aaron’s answer. 

* * *

The house is lit up from the inside but completely void of any holiday decorations. Katelyn wasn’t expecting lit-up snowmen cavorting on the lawn in front of the house, but it surprises her to see a house without even a wraith on the door. Her parents are traditional in that way. 

Neil parks in the empty driveway and takes the pizza boxes from Katelyn’s lap so she can get up, walking to the door without waiting for either of them. It’s South Carolina: the house has a porch and a screen door, which Katelyn props open with her hip while Neil locks the car and searches for his keys. 

The inside of the house looks deceptively normal, if a little bare. Katelyn doesn’t realize she was dreading much worse until the quiet atmosphere surprises her. 

“I’ve got pizza,” Neil says as he makes his way into the kitchen. Aaron follows him, dropping the cooler bag on the counter next to the boxes. “And ice cream.”

A hum answers him from across the hallway. Katelyn turns to see Kevin stretched on the couch in the small living room, focused on the TV and fiddling with his phone. He looks up after a lull in the game he’s watching.

“Oh,” he says, seeing her. Katelyn waves. “Hello.” His gaze travels from her to Aaron at her side. “What’re you doing here?”

“Car problems.” Aaron scowls. “We’re sleeping here tonight.”

“Does Andrew know?”

Here it comes. 

“Yes,” Katelyn answers for Aaron, already annoyed at people taking around her. “Where’s the bathroom?”

Kevin stares at her for a second, then gestures toward the rest of the house. “Down the hall.”

The bathroom is messy but cleaner than Katelyn expected. For her own sake, she angles her hand under the spray of water to wash a toothpaste stain away, and then she dawdles, fixing her hair in front of the mirror, until she’s as sure as she can be that Kevin and Nicky have been brought up to speed. 

Nicky is out in the kitchen by the time she comes out of the bathroom and he smiles at her widely. Katelyn can’t help but grin back. His good temper is infective, helping her unclench about being in this house. 

Neil has already started cutting a piece of the pizza. No decorum required: he slaps a part down on a plate and goes across to the living room, taking his place next to Kevin. 

“How’s the game going?” he asks. 

“Oohh,” Nicky says as he inspects the pizza boxes. “What game are you watching? Football? Baseball?”

Neil frowns his nose. “Exy?” he says, sounding slightly perplexed. “We’re watching the Sirens vs. Martins game.”

“Oh, Neil.” Nicky’s tone grows sad. “You will never understand sarcasm, will you?”

“Not when it’s not funny.”

“Is anything ever funny to you?” Aaron mutters next to Katelyn. He pushes Nicky away from his unfocused perusal, grabs three plates and piles them with pizza before handing two of them to Katelyn and Nicky. 

Katelyn bites her lips to contain her laugh at Nicky’s face. Nicky wanders into the living room. “Professional exy? Kevin, you’re branching out.”

“It’s because Thea’s playing,” Neil quips , at the same time Kevin answers, “I have to answer the scouts at some point.”

Well, Katelyn knows who she believes, and it’s not Neil. She isn’t sure anyone has influence enough on Kevin to take his mind off his own game and career. But Aaron next to her says, “Definitely Thea. Wanna watch?”

The table in the kitchen is half-buried under boxes and bags and crumpled receipts. The living room has a warm-looking rug and looks bright and peopled against the dark evening. 

“Sure,” she shrugs. 

She settles in one of the two armchairs, leaving Neil and Kevin to share the couch and their obsession. Nicky settles on the ground at the coffee table, and Aaron imitates him, closer to Katelyn. The living room is too small for Aaron to be both sitting at the table and away from Katelyn: hooking her socked foot around his arm, she drags him back toward her. He only has to scoot a couple of inches backward to press against her shins. 

“Aw,” Nicky says, unabashedly looking at them. “Straight love. So beautiful.”

“Fuck off,” Aaron says, almost politely. 

Neil shushes them as the commentators go wild on TV. Katelyn glances at the screen just in time to see fans in the stands go wild. She hopes it’s a goal for Thea’s team, whichever it is. 

Kevin’s face betrays nothing, but he presses the volume button a couple of times until the message gets across. Nicky rolls his eyes, catching Katelyn’s gaze. They smile at each other over the room.

Aaron takes her plate when she’s done with her part of pizza. He intends to go to the kitchen to refill it and his, but Nicky and Kevin both make demands for more at the same time, so he ends up dumping the pizza boxes on the coffee table, inciting a wild free-for-all during the commercial break. 

“So,” Nicky asks during a diaper commercial featuring a smiling young mother, “how’s the pineapple?”

The half of pizza with pineapple is most intact one. The rest has been neatly cleaned. Nicky grabbed a part at one point, as did Neil, although Katelyn has a feeling Neil is the kind of person who eats anything over the basis that “food is food.” 

Kevin shrugs. “Not bad. I’ll try again with good pizza another time.”

Nicky makes an outraged noise.

“This  _ is _ good pizza, asshole,” Aaron says. 

“I’ve been to Italy,” Kevin replies pompously.

“Oh my god. Oh my  _ god _ .”

Katelyn has to agree with Nicky. She smothers her laugh in the crust she’s eating. 

“Neil, tell him this is good pizza,” Nicky urges, but Neil only shrugs. 

“It’s just pizza,” he says, stacking his plate on Kevin’s on the coffee table. 

“Don’t tell me—you don’t actually like pizza. There’s a very traumatic event in your past that involves pizza. Pizza once kicked your puppy—”

“Nicky.” 

Nicky shakes his head. He turns toward Katelyn. “Katelyn? Verdict? Good pizza, bad pizza?”

“Good pizza,” she agrees. 

“ _ Thank you _ ! Finally someone with taste.”

“We have taste, just not the same one as yours.”

“Kevin, do you ever hear yourself talk? Like, just once, I wish I could record you just to show you what you inflict upon the world.”

“Half-time is over,” Neil cuts off, and so they’re silent again.

Katelyn didn’t think Aaron would hold any real interest in the game, but he watches it, mostly. At one point he fiddles with his phone, answering a quick text from “Dickhead who says ‘hell yeah’ (chem).” It reminds Katelyn that she hasn’t even notified her parents of the situation—they’ll be worried sick waiting for her to tell them they’ve arrived safely at the campus.

She posts about it in the family chat and spends a good part of the second half reassuring her anxious sister that she hasn’t burned down in her car. She gives as much details as she can from her conversation with the mechanic and watches her parents argue over whether it’s serious or not, whether she’s safe or traumatised and stuck outside in the rain—nevermind that she’s already told them where she is and exactly what happened. 

Finally the topic dies, her mother promises her to transfer her enough to cover the costs, and Katelyn locks her phone, glancing at the TV.

There’s still a good twenty minutes left in the game and the score looks even enough that she has no way of telling which team is the best. She takes no interest in it either, so she closes her eyes and reclines against the back of the chair, sticking her hands between her thighs to warm them up. Aaron is a heavy and warm spot against her shins, the brush of his thumb against her ankle soothing and regular. 

She almost dozes off, floating in and out of consciousness as the sound on TV allows her. She knows the game has ended when a loud clamor takes over the voices of the commentators and Kevin and Neil start talking again.

“Mhmm,” she says when Aaron nudges her knee. She opens bleary eyes to see him turned toward her, his chin hooked on her leg. “Who won?”

“The Sirens,” Neil says. “Their offense line is a little weak, but their defense managed to control the game until the end.”

Katelyn blinks at her. In her tired state, the words mean nothing to her.

“Thea did good,” Nicky sums up for her. “Kevin’s proud and has an exy boner. Everyone’s happy.”

“Shut up, Nicky,” Kevin says, balling up his napkin and throwing it at his friend’s head.

“That’s great,” Katelyn tells Kevin. She gently dislodges Aaron to draw her legs up, easing the pressure off her numb tailbone. 

“Their offense  _ is  _ weak,” he replies, although maybe not to Katelyn. He stares at the TV where the teams are lining up to shake hands. “But it won’t take much to make them one of the best teams in the league. I don’t know if—”

“Just take the damn offer,” Aaron says. “We all know you want it.”

Kevin opens his mouth to argue further, but a sound in the kitchen cuts him off. Everyone turns back as one man just in time to see Andrew Minyard browse through the mess on the kitchen table. 

“Hey,” Neil says. “We were just watching the Sirens’ game.”

Andrew’s answer is non-verbal but still clear as day. He glares at Neil, turning away to get a plate from the same cupboard Katelyn saw Aaron open earlier. 

She represses a shiver. Andrew is dressed all in black, as usual, and his hair is a little messier than Aaron’s, but seeing that blank expression on such familiar traits is still disorienting. 

A hand on her foot draws her attention back to Aaron. His face is set and serious, but not angry, supportive but not confrontational yet. There is nothing to win by antagonizing Andrew, although Katelyn knows now that Aaron won’t let him get away with much if he decides to take a more aggressive path. It’s comforting, in a way that makes Katelyn uneasy. The fact that indifference is the best relationship the Minyards can hope for is difficult for her to stomach, when she’s so close to her own sister despite their age difference. 

Andrew abandons his search in the kitchen, seemingly unaware that all eyes are on him. Kevin’s half-heartedly watching the highlights of the game and Neil has given up on the TV entirely, choosing instead to stare at his boyfriend with a curiously intense look on his face. 

Andrew doesn’t say anything when he passes the armchair Katelyn is sitting in, and he doesn’t even glance in his brother’s direction. He steps over Nicky, who’s suddenly busy with his phone, and pops open the empty boxes on the coffee table.

“The one on the left still has pizza in it,” Neil indicates.

Katelyn is almost expecting Andrew to rebuff him. Logically, she knows that Andrew can’t be all that bad with Neil, since Neil is willing to date Andrew in the first place. But it’s still surprising to see him wordlessly acknowledge Neil’s words and open the right pizza box. 

It’s the one with pineapple, since no one ate too much of it. Andrew takes a slice, neatly picking the pineapple slices and dumping them back in the carton. 

The action seems to break a spell. As if relieved that Andrew let them pass a test, everyone in the living room relaxes, even Aaron, whose grip on Katelyn goes slack. 

“You don’t like the pineapple?” Neil asks innocently as the TV segues from a view of the court to journalists and sports analysts in a brightly-lit studio. “I would have thought it’s sweet enough.”

Maybe it’s deliberately meant to tease Andrew; in any case, the remark annoys him enough that he flicks the last bit of pineapple directly at Neil instead of down into the box.

“Hey,” Nicky protests as the fruit hits Neil in the cheek. “Don’t throw food around the furniture. Remember what happened with that pickle in high school?”

Aaron clearly does. He almost shivers, so Katelyn resolves to coax the story out of him, though she has a feeling she’ll regret it later. Teenage boys are gross, and Nicky wasn’t much older or neater than the twins when he took them in. 

“Don’t talk about that,” Aaron warns Nicky in a strained voice.

“I still have nightmares about it,” Nicky agrees. 

Katelyn watches them with consternation. On the couch, Neil and Kevin share the same look. Neil picks up the pineapple bit that fell on his shirt and pops it in his mouth like he can banish the thought of the pickle by eating this offending food. 

Andrew’s done with his sorting. He closes the box carelessly, heads for the couch where Neil scoots over, and grabs the remote instead of sitting down.

“No,” Kevin says as he points it toward the TV. “It’s the game analysis. Leave it on.”

“It’s for the Houston Sirens,” Neil adds. “Kevin’s considering whether it’s a good investment to play for them after graduation.”

It obviously does the trick. Andrew points the remote at Kevin—Katelyn almost expects him to say, “I’m watching you”—and retreats to the second armchair. He keeps the remote with him but doesn’t use it, staring at the TV like he can see through it. 

“Alright,” Nicky says next, breaking the awkward silence. “I’m beat, I’m going to bed.”

“Good night,” Katelyn tells him automatically as he passes by her chair. She’s the only one to say so, getting a hand squeeze and a smile in return.

Once Nicky’s retreated, Aaron takes his turn and gets up, stretching his legs. “I’m off too. Kate?”

Katelyn isn’t staying in the same room as Andrew with only Kevin and Neil as questionable defense. “Yep,” she says, springing from her chair. “Good night, see you tomorrow!”

Andrew actually glares at her over his cold pizza. She takes a savage satisfaction in knowing that the reminder of her presence the next day bothers him enough that he acknowledges her. In this moment, the light from the TV coloring his pale hair blue, huddled in a chair over a plate of cold pizza, he almost looks like a petulant child. She blames her boldness, her little wave, and pert smile on it. 

Aaron follows her in the bathroom, stacking his toiletries bag next to hers on the closed lid of the toilet. The vanity is too small and too crowded with random razors and toothbrushes for them to put them elsewhere. 

They brush their teeth in silence, but Aaron finally speaks up when they’re washing their face. “He’s not gonna do anything,” he says, his voice muffled as he cups water on his face. 

“I know.”

“I won’t let him. And I don’t think he even thinks violence would be an answer to you anymore.”

Katelyn doubts that. “I know,” she lies. Then, because she remembers that communication is important: “Well, I’m not so sure about this one, actually.”

Aaron straightens up, cutting off the tap. He watches her apply her night cream with his arms crossed. “Tolerance takes the form of indifference in Andrew’s language.”

“He glared at me. That’s not indifference.”

But Aaron waves that aside. “That’s just the way he communicates,” he says. “He goes non-verbal for days and just expects you to learn to fucking read his mind.”

“Neil seemed capable of understanding him.”

“Neil is as fucked up as Andrew.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Katelyn chides him. Two years ago, Aaron would have grown angry. Now he just sulks for a minute. 

“Fine,” he snaps. His next words are warmer. “Neil is fucked up in the same way as Andrew, which gives him an easier understanding of his motives and behaviors than us poor fucks who are fucked up in different ways.”

He ignores Katelyn’s look, but reaches over her to close her cream pot while she rubs the excess coating her fingers to her forearms. 

“Thanks,” she tells him, leaning in for a kiss. 

He steals another one when she draws back and Katelyn leans against him for a short while, closing her eyes. She’s so sleepy that she could drop right here on the wrinkled towel being used as a bath mat. 

Finally movement from the living room reminds them that they’re standing only a short ways off from three people Katelyn wishes to avoid seeing again tonight, and they gather their bags to make room in the small, crowded bathroom. Aaron steps out while Katelyn pees, then she makes her way upstairs to Aaron’s bedroom according to his instructions, which are just, “the door on the left.”

It’s a little cryptic, but when she steps at the top of the stairs she realizes that there’s no need for more: there are only two rooms at this floor. The door on the left is firmly shut from the last time Aaron was there, which must have been two or three weeks ago, since he spent all of Christmas and New Year’s with the Millers. The other door is cracked open on a slither of dark. Katelyn hesitates. She knows she shouldn’t, that it’s not only stupid but invasive—Andrew is reacting relatively well to her presence in the house, no matter how unfair it is for her to settle for so little. She has nothing to gain by antagonizing him by breaching his privacy.

Not counting that she would hate for someone to do this to her, and she was raised on a strict “don’t do unto others what you wouldn’t wish them to do to you” principle.

Still, it’s Andrew. She sort of wants to see how he lives in private. 

She slithers up to the door after checking that no one is coming up the stairs. No one can see her from the living room or the kitchen. It’s the matter of a second to pop her head through the doorway, feel for the light switch and flick it on. 

The bareness of the room surprises her. Maybe it shouldn’t, because it’s the middle of the school year and it makes sense that Andrew’s moved most of his stuff to the dorms. There’s a bed in a corner and a small nightstand with nothing but a lamp and a phone on it. She sees a box of condoms lying on the floor and averts her eyes quickly. Dirty clothes are dropped in a pile at the foot of the bed, and two bags are left open under the window. One of them is Neil’s for sure; Katelyn recognizes a red sweater she’s seen him wear before and that Andrew, with his monochromatic aesthetic, wouldn’t be caught dead in.

But there are no books, no knick-knacks or even traces that some have existed and been replaced. The emptiness is almost sad. Looking at the room, Katelyn can almost understand the boredom on Andrew’s face, can match that blankness with a physical manifestation. 

It unsettles her, so she turns off the light and pulls the door back how she found it. In contrast, she realizes with relief that Aaron’s room is a little more lived in. Shelves with books line the walls and the dresser sports a slightly dusty but clearly used sound system. 

She settles on the bed after plugging in her phone, browsing through social media until Aaron joins her in the room. 

“I had to tell Andrew his ice cream is in the freezer,” he says, closing the door behind himself. “That’ll keep him happy for the rest of the evening. As happy as he ever is, anyways.”

True to his promise, there is a lock on Aaron’s door. Katelyn watches as he turns it without looking, almost like a reflex. Maybe it is one. 

Aaron surreptitiously gives one of the pillowcases a sniff, but Katelyn takes it from him. 

“I really don’t care if it’s a little dusty,” she says. “I’m just tired.”

Aaron looks too tired to argue as well. “Let’s just turn them over,” he says. “We’re leaving tomorrow anyways.”

Katelyn shuffles back on the bed against the wall and lets Aaron turn off the light. In the dim light from the street streaking in the room, she can see the halo of fine hairs around his head and she smiles privately.

“What?” he asks in a low voice, like they’re kids at a sleepover. 

“Nothing. I’m glad we’re here.”

The look he gives her is quizzical, like he’s not sure she’s telling the truth, but she realizes as she says it that she is. It’s a part of him—of his life, his family—that has always been difficult for her to access, out of necessity. Things are far from perfect, and she’s sure the unease will start up again tomorrow morning, when she has to face Andrew again. But right now, under the warm blankets in Aaron’s high school bedroom, she feels like the step they’ve taken is bigger than finding a roof for the night. 

“I love you,” she tells him, drawing the blanket higher under her chin.

Aaron wrinkles his forehead like he always does when he considers her in moments like this, not out of distaste but as an unconscious proof of his focus. 

“I love you too,” he answers, a little quickly. Saying the words is new to him, but he’s taken to it with the stubbornness and doggedness he puts in everything he deems worth it.

Outside, the clouds suddenly break, rain pattering against the windows. It’s the weather her parents predicted for her hours ago, finally catching up with them. Katelyn closes her eyes, gently touching her foot to Aaron’s ankle as per her habit, and sleeps. 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know the slightest thing about cars and I don't care enough to do research, so they're all useless with cars in this fic. ALSO Katelyn may think Andrew is scary and threatening (and he is), but mostly he's completely out of it because he just woke up from an 11pm nap. Reality hasn't set in yet.
> 
> Anyway, please tell me if you enjoyed! You can find me and reblog the fic @[jsteneil](https://jsteneil.tumblr.com/post/187560019651/come-home-with-me) on tumblr.


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